When you’re running a business that operates locally, you will undoubtedly still benefit from using online marketing, however, how you go about advertising your business digitally will need to be a little different from how online-only businesses go about it. This is because you will need to focus your efforts much more on one geographic location than they would need to.

If you’re not sure how to approach the marketing of your local business online, here are some tips to help you out:

Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly

Whether you’re a local contract cleaning company, a local bakery or a greengrocers operating in your local market, you need to have a website. Why? Because today, the first thing that most people do is Google for the services they’re interested in and move on from there.

As well as having a good website in place, it is even more important that you make it mobile friendly. You need to do this so that people can use their phones to find you when they’re in the area and looking for a place to go right then and there.

Search Engine Optimise for Your Location

This is a pretty obvious one, but if you’re targeting customers in a particular location, then you need to optimise your website for that location. You can do this by including location specific information to your website, along with the products and/or services you offer locally, using highly targeted keywords to help you along the way. If you have little experience with SEO and marketing, it might be worth seeking professional help. Why? Because this, more than anything else will determine whether your business is amongst the most or least visible online in your area.

Include Your Opening Hours and Address

This should be a no-brainer, but so many local companies neglect to add their opening hours and address to their own website and social media profiles, let along Google and the various local online directories. This is a massive own goal because, even if you do everything you can to get your results to the top of the search engines if people have no way of finding you, then they’re probably going to move on to the next result and go elsewhere.

Include Numerous Points of Contact

It’s always a good idea to make it as easy as possible for your audience to contact you. So, make sure that you provide an email address, phone number, live chat and social media access along with your physical address. This is particularly important if you run a business where your services need to be booked as opposed to, say, a local shop, where people can just walk in.

Post Often on Social Media

Most local people these days tend to look to social media for recommendations, just as much as they do Google, and that’s why it has never been more important that you post regular, interesting posts on social media. This will help to increase your number of followers and the amount of shares you get, which will raise your profile and encourage more locals to do business with you.